HURIWA to Uzodimma, Soludo, resign if you can’t defend citizens

Civil Rights Advocacy Group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has asked Imo and Anambra states governors,Hope Uzodimma and Charles Nwangbafor Soludo to resign forthwith since they have shown deep seated incapacity and unwillingness to clinically bring to an end the bloody violence tearing their states apart and which have led to the killings of thousands of citizens of both Anambra and Imo State by sundry armed gunmen and the security forces.

HURIWA said the incessant attacks of soft targets by armed gunmen and the killings of Igbo youths by the operatives of the Police, the DSS, the Army on special operation in the South East of Nigeria to quell the rising agitations for self determination and the fact that the Anambra and Imo States administrations apparently lacked the will power to appropriately respond to the expanding frontiers of violence and dastardly crimes of extra legal killings of citizens and the destruction of strategic public institutions, means that the governors have failed in the discharge of their constitutionally guaranteed primary duty of government which is the protection of lives and property of the citizens.

The Rights group said it is clear that politicians in those states are the director-general beneficiaries of the state of anarchy and heightened insecurity because they cart away billions of public fund under the guise of security votes which are not deployed appropriately to secure those States.

Specifically, HURIWA recalled that it was a tragic day for residents of Ngor Okpala Local Government Area of Imo State as gunmen once again ambushed and killed two police officers on Saturday jyst as the Rights group said this is coming barely one month after the gunmen ambushed and killed five policemen and a couple at the same Okpala junction located on the Owerri-Aba Road.

Besides, thd Rights group said it is also in the same Ngor Okpala LGA of the state, five officers of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps were attacked and slain in March. The Rights group said due to the tragedy that occurred on Saturday, many locals have deserted their homes and places of business. Many observers who spoke with thd media claimed that seven officers were shot dead during the incident, even though the state’s police department had only acknowledged the deaths of two officers.

HURIWA in a statement made available to PlatinumPost by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, recalled that information obtained by the media showed that the gunmen initially opened fire on the policemen, killing two of them and one was injured on Sunday at a checkpoint along Aba Road in Okpala.

“When contacted, the police spokesman for the command, Henry Okoye, said only two policemen “paid the supreme prize. The police spokesman in a telephone conversation confirmed that the gunmen were engaged in a gun duel by “the vigilant policemen on duty. He added that the police had found the blood-stained car that the gunmen abandoned while traveling in one of their operating vehicles.

Okoye claimed the command’s operatives had seized control of the area to inspire confidence in the local populace and to locate the suspects, ” the statement said.

HURIWA said one of the members of staff of the US medical mission to Anambra State that were attacked viciously by armed freelance gunmen who lives in Kubwa Abuja with his young family of two little kids and a heavily pregnant wife, has now died living behind his heavily pregnant full time wife and two young kids just as the Rights group condemned governor Charles Soludo for even failing to visit homes of these staff of US medical mission killed in his state but was rather blaming the victims of the attack for not providing prior notice to the Anambra State administration before visiting Anambra State.

HURIWA said the governor is shamelessly incompetent if he insists that delegations visiting his state need to tell him before they can be protected.